Acts 28:26 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Go unto this people, and say ... — On the passage thus quoted see Notes on Matthew 13:14-15. Here we are chiefly concerned with the fact that the words had been cited by our Lord as describing the spiritual state of the Jews of Palestine, and that the record of their citation is found in the first three Gospels (Matthew 13:13; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10), while St. John (John 12:40) reproduces them as embodying the solution of the apparent failure of our Lord’s personal ministry. Looking to the fact that this implies a wide currency given to the prophecy in all reports, oral or written, of our Lord’s teaching, and that St. Paul was clearly well acquainted with one collection of our Lord’s discourses (Acts 20:35), we can hardly resist the inference that he now applied them as following in the track of his Master’s teaching. What was true of the Jews of Jerusalem was true also of those of Rome. In both there was a wilful blindness and deafness to that which ought to have produced conviction and conversion. (Comp. the language which the Apostle had previously used in Romans 11:25.)